China's economy grew by 7 percent in the second quarter, unchanged from the previous three months, but better than market expectations, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.
The country's gross domestic product for the first half of the year was 29.7 trillion yuan ($4.8 trillion), up 7 percent year on year.
Bureau spokesman Sheng Laiyun said growth remained stable in the face of weak global demand and huge downward pressure in the domestic market.
"China's employment, inflation and people's confidence in the economy are stabilizing along with the accelerating industrial restructuring and reforms," he said.
"We saw positive signs in the second quarter and in the next phase we will carefully monitor the risks to consolidate a rebound, and try to carry out various targets and missions set by the central government in rebalancing the economy," he said.
The government has set a growth target of "about 7 percent" for the whole year, as the country adapts to the "new normal" of slower, but higher quality, expansion.
Economic growth in the first half was mostly driven by the service sector, which gained 8.4 percent to 14.7 trillion yuan, while manufacturing added 6.1 percent to 12.96 trillion yuan and agriculture rose 3.5 percent to 2.02 trillion yuan.
Liu Ligang, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, said that to achieve its target, China must maintain its proactive fiscal policy and accommodating monetary policy for the rest of the year.
"We still believe interest rates will be cut by 25 basis points in the third quarter, while the reserve requirement ratio may be reduced by 50 basis points in each of the third and fourth quarters," Liu said.
In recent months, the government has sought to bolster the economy and shore up the stock market by increasing market liquidity by cutting both interest rates and banks' reserve requirement ratio. It also accelerated the development of several public sector projects.
Andrew Colquhoun, head of Asia-Pacific Sovereigns at Fitch Ratings, said that despite the recent stock market volatility, the latest economic figures pointed to further improvements in the second half of the year.
"The longer-term outlook remains one of structural slowdown as the economy works through a painful process of adjustment and deleveraging," he said.
Industrial production increased 6.3 percent in the first half, with factories reporting a third straight month of faster growth in June, when output increased by 6.8 percent, the bureau said.
Fixed-asset investment grew 11.4 percent to 23.7 trillion yuan in the first half, slowing from 13.5 percent growth in the first three months. Capital flowing into the property sector rose 4.6 percent, which was far slower than the first-quarter expansion of 8.5 percent.
Retail sales accelerated 10.4 percent in the first six months to 14.15 trillion yuan, slowing from 10.2 percent in the January-March period. Growth in June alone, however, accelerated to 10.6 percent.
One of the best performers in the period was online sales, which surged more than 39 percent to 1.64 trillion yuan.
The per capita disposable income rose 9 percent in the year through June to 10,931 yuan, with rural earnings growing 1.6 points faster than urban pay.
Almost 7.2 million jobs were created in the first half, or about 72 percent of the full-year target, the bureau said.
The higher earnings and jobs boost resulted in the contribution of consumption to GDP rising 5.7 points from last year to 60 percent, according to the bureau.
